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Eternalism
Edited by Sam Baron (Australian Catholic University)
About this topic
| Summary | Eternalism, broadly speaking, is the view that all entities, past, present and future, exist. From this point of agreement, eternalists can be divided into two very different competing theories – the A-theory and the B-theory. For A-theoretical eternalists, the past, present, and future all exist but the present moment is objectively privileged. This is the view normally called the Moving Spotlight Theory. Alternatively, for B-theorists and C-theorists, eternalism is the picture of time delivered to us by the special and general theories of relativity. B-/C-theoretic, or standard, eternalists hold, roughly, that (i) all times from the big-bang to the heat death of the universe exist equally; (ii) there is nothing metaphysically special about the present (terms like 'present' and 'now' are indexical notions); (iii) the passage of time is not an objective feature of reality. Standard eternalism is also known as the 'block universe' view, which is meant to suggest a conception of the universe as a four-dimensional spacetime manifold. |
| Key works | Mellor 1998 offers a book length defense of the eternalist model of time and discusses many of the issues and arguments surrounding the view. For early defenders of the view seeWilliams 1951, who offers an argument for eternalism, Taylor 1955, who argues for a lack of clear difference between time and space, and Callender 2017 who looks at the difference between time and space for the B-theorist eternalist. [BROKEN REFERENCE: PUTTAPand] [BROKEN REFERENCE: RIEARPadvocate] for an eternalist model of time based on the special theory of relativity, and Smart 1963 holds that eternalism results from dropping our pre-scientific, anthropocentric view of the world. Sider 2001 argues for eternalism in the midst of a book length defense of a perdurance theory of persistence. Ciuni et al 2013, and Dyke 2021 are also useful. Eternalism is also of interest in other areas of philosophy – for example, Rogers 2009 argues that Anselm was an eternalist. |
| Introductions | Good introductions include Rea 2003, Miller 2013, the collected papers in Ciuni et al 2013 and Markosian 2010. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Growing Block Views (105)
- Presentism (429)
- The Open Future (298)
- Determinism (833)
- Fatalism (327)
- Temporal Eliminativism (68)
- Temporal Ontology, Misc (132)
Contents
258 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 258 |
- Time Remains.Sean Gryb & Karim P. Y. Thébault - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3):663-705.On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom. At a quantum level, this view of change as relative variation leads to a fundamentally timeless formalism for quantum gravity. Here, we will show how one may avoid this acute ‘problem of time’. Under our view, (...)
- Presentism and the Experience of Time.Mauro Dorato - 2015 - Topoi 34 (1):265-275.Presentists have typically argued that the Block View is incapable of explaining our experience of time. In this paper I argue that the phenomenology of our experience of time is, on the contrary, against presentism. My argument is based on a dilemma: presentists must either assume that the metaphysical present has no temporal extension, or that it is temporally extended. The former horn leads to phenomenological problems. The latter renders presentism metaphysically incoherent, unless one posits a discrete present that, however, (...)
- No longer true.Luca Barlassina & Fabio Del Prete - manuscriptThere are sentences that express the same temporally fully specified proposition at all contexts--call them 'context-insensitive, temporally specific sentences.' Sentence (1) 'Obama was born in 1961' is a case in point: at all contexts, it expresses the proposition ascribing to the year 1961 the property of being a time in which Obama was born. Suppose that someone uttered (1) in a context located on Christmas 2000 in our world. In this context, (1) is a true sentence about the past. Moreover, (...)
- Temporal Scattering.William Bynoe - manuscriptI show that the Eternalist faces a trilemma. Given their theory of time, three claims are each very plausible, yet together form an inconsistent triad. Denying any one of these claims will have significant consequences for how they can conceive of the material realm. I urge that the best strategy is to deny the first claim, and show that this would have a significant consequence: Perdurantism is false.
- Momentum and Context.Hans Halvorson - manuscriptA sentence's meaning may depend on the state of motion of the speaker. I argue that this context-sensitivity blocks the inference from special relativity to four-dimensionalism.
- The Time Flow Manifesto Chapter 4 Metaphysical Time Flow.Andrew Holster - manuscriptIn the philosophy of time, the neo-positivist is focussed above all else on sustaining the view called the static theory of time, as the very foundation of their scientific metaphysics. This is the deeply held metaphysical conviction of almost all ‘modern philosophical-scientific’ writers on time. In fact it is hardly too much to say that the entire official modern 20th Century philosophy of physics rests on the assumption that the static theory of space-time is the only concept of time we (...)
- A Better A-theory.Alexander Jackson - manuscriptI present a new kind of A-theory. On this proposal, time’s passing is a metaphysically fundamental aspect of reality. I take this to mean that there are fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. This A-theory also posits fundamental facts about the state of the universe at a given time, and about cross-temporal relationships. The proposed metaphysical package attractively articulates our pre-relativistic conception of time. I defend the proposal from a number of orthodox objections: fundamental facts (...)
- Till Death Do Us Part: The Moral Problems of Personites.Andrew Russo & Martin Montminy - manuscriptAccording to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at different times. Personites, on the other hand, are non-maximal aggregates of stages that are nonetheless very much like persons. Their existence appears to make instances of prudential self-sacrifice morally problematic: the personites that exist at the time of the sacrifice but not at the time of the reward seem to be unfairly exploited. Instances of punishment appear to give rise to a similar problem. We argue that these (...)
- Time as Narrative: an Ontological Daydream.Marcos Wagner Da Cunha - manuscriptA thought experiment on the ultimate non-essence of Time.
- Heraclitean Flux Metaphysics.Andrew Dennis Bassford - forthcoming - Metaphysica: International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics.This essay offers an original interpretation and defense of the doctrine of flux, as it is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. The methodology of the paper’s analysis is in the style of rational reconstruction, and it is highly analytic in scope, in the sense that I will focus on the text itself, and only on certain parts of it too, while ignoring the rest of Plato’s extensive corpus, and without worrying about whether, how, and to what extent the interpretation of the (...)
- The Transcendental Phenomenological Argument against Eternalism.László Bernáth & Daniel Haydar Inan - forthcoming - Metaphysica.In this paper, we argue against eternalism on the basis of certain phenomenological considerations regarding our experiential life in a relatively novel way. Contrary to well-known phenomenological arguments that attempt to refute tenseless theories of time, our argument that we call the Transcendental Phenomenological Argument against Eternalism is against both tenseless and tensed versions of eternalism. The argument is based on the fact that one experiences a phenomenological succession of experiences, and it shows that perdurantist forms of eternalism have to (...)
- Paradoxes of Time Travel to the Future.Sara Bernstein - forthcoming - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.This paper brings two fresh perspectives on Lewis’s theory of time travel. First: many key aspects and theoretical desiderata of Lewis’s theory can be captured in a framework that does not commit to eternalism about time. Second: implementing aspects of Lewisian time travel in a non-eternalist framework provides theoretical resources for a better treatment of time travel to the future. While time travel to the past has been extensively analyzed, time travel to the future has been comparatively underexplored. I make (...)
- Pantheism, Omnisubjectivity, and the Feeling of Temporal Passage.Andrei A. Buckareff - forthcoming - Religions.By “pantheism” I mean to pick out a model of God on which God is identical with the totality of existents constitutive of the universe. I assume that, on pantheism, God is an omnispatiotemporal mind who is identical with the universe. I assume that, given divine omnispatiotemporality, God knows everything that can be known in the universe. This includes having knowledge de se of the minds of every conscious creature. Hence, if God has knowledge de se of the minds of (...)
- Center Indifference and Skepticism.David Builes - forthcoming - Noûs.Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one’s evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue (...)
- An Empirical Argument for Presentism.David Builes & Michele Odisseas Impagnatiello - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.According to orthodoxy, our best physical theories strongly support Eternalism over Presentism. Our goal is to argue against this consensus, by arguing that a certain overlooked aspect of our best physical theories strongly supports Presentism over Eternalism.
- Advice for Eleatics.Sam Cowling - forthcoming - In Chris Daly (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods.Eleaticism ties ontology to causality by denying the impossibility of causally inert entities. This paper examines some challenges regarding the proper formulation and general plausibility of Eleaticism. After suggesting how Eleatics ought to respond to these challenges, I consider the prospects for extending Eleaticism from ontology to ideology by requiring all primitive ideology to be causal in nature. Surprisingly enough, the resulting view delivers an eternalist and possibilist metaphysical picture in the neighborhood of Lewisian modal realism.
- The Modal Moving Spotlight Theory.Daniel Deasy - forthcoming - Mind.The Moving Spotlight Theory (MST) combines three theses: first, that there is an absolute present time; second, that always, everything exists eternally; and third, that exactly one fundamental property is temporary. In this paper, I argue that MST so defined can be combined with a reductive analysis of the tense operators (i.e. properties of propositions like being past), which I call the 'Modal Analysis'. According to the Modal Analysis, for it to be the case that at a time t, p (...)
- Time, Metaphysics of.Natalja Deng - forthcoming - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Metaphysics is the part of philosophy that asks questions about the nature of reality – about what there is, and what it is like. The metaphysics of time is the part of the philosophy of time that asks questions about the nature of temporal reality. One central such question is that of whether time passes or flows, or whether it has a dynamic aspect.
- What Quine (and Carnap) might say about contemporary metaphysics of time.Natalja Deng - forthcoming - In Frederique Janssen-Lauret (ed.), Quine, Structure, and Ontology. Oxford University Press.This chapter explores some of the relations between Quine’s and Carnap’s metaontological stances on the one hand, and contemporary work in the metaphysics of time, on the other. Contemporary metaphysics of time, like analytic metaphysics in general, grew out of the revival of the discipline that Quine’s critique of the logical empiricists (such as Carnap) made possible. At the same time, the metaphysics of time has, in some respects, strayed far from its Quinean roots. This chapter examines some likely Quinean (...)
- The Affective and Practical Consequences of Presentism and Eternalism.Mauro Dorato - forthcoming - Argumenta.In the dispute between presentism and eternalism, the affective dimensions of the debate have been somewhat neglected. Contemporary philosophers of time have not tried to relate these ontological positions with two of the most discussed maxims in the history of ethics – “live in the present” vs. “look at your life under the aspect of the eternity” (sub specie aeternitatis)– that since the Hellenistic times have been regarded as strictly connected with them. Consequently, I raise the question of whether the (...)
- Meaning in Life and the Nature of Time.Ned Markosian - forthcoming - In The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Many of the leading accounts of what makes a life meaningful are goal-based theories, according to which it is the pursuit of some specific goal (such as love for things that are worthy of love) that gives meaning to our lives. In this chapter I consider how these goal-based theories of meaning in life interact with the two main theories of the nature of time that have been defended in the recent metaphysics literature, namely, The Dynamic Theory of Time and (...)$129.32 used (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark - Commentary: Physical time within human time.Kristie Miller & Danqi Wang - forthcoming - Frontiers in Psychology.Gruber et al. (2022) and Buonomano and Rovelli (Forthcoming) aim to render Q18 consistent the picture of time delivered to us by physics, with the way time seems to us in experience. Their general approach is similar; they take the picture of our world given to us in physics, a picture on which there is no global “moving” present and hence no robust temporal flow, and attempt to explain why things nevertheless seem to us as they do, given that our (...)
- The Passage of Time as Causal Succession of Events.Avril Styrman - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.This work introduces a causal explanation of the passage of time, and contrasts it with rival explanations. In the causal explanation, laws of physics are shown to entail that events are in causal succession, and the passage of time is defined as their causal succession. The causal explanation is coupled with phenomenology of the passage of time, and contrasted with the project of making sense of the idea that time does not pass.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Truthmaking.Jamin Asay - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Truthmaking is the metaphysical exploration of the idea that what is true depends upon what exists. Truthmaker theorists argue about what the truthmaking relation involves, which truths require truthmakers, and what those truthmakers are. This Element covers the dominant views on these core issues in truthmaking. It also explores some key metaphysical topics and debates that are usefully approached by employing the tools of truthmaker theory: the debate between presentists and eternalists over the existence of entities from the past, and (...)
- A Humean Non-Humeanism.David Builes - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (3):1031-1048.How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is (...)
- Temporal experience and the present in George P. Adams’ eternalism.A. R. J. Fisher - 2023 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (2):355-376.In the early twentieth century, many philosophers in America thought that time should be taken seriously in one way or another. George P. Adams (1882-1961) argued that the past, present and future are all real but only the present is actual. I call this theory ‘actualist eternalism’. In this paper, I articulate his novel brand of eternalism as one piece of his metaphysical system and I explain how he argued for the view in light of the best explanations of temporal (...)
- What do VR experiments teach us about time?Andrew J. Latham & Alex Holcombe - 2023 - Frontiers in Psychology 13:1082844.Gruber and Smith (2019) have conducted some interesting virtual reality (VR) experiments, but we think that these experiments fail to illuminate why people think that the present is special. Their experiments attempted to test a suggestion by Hartle (2005) that with VR one might construct scenarios in which people experience the same present twice. If that’s possible, then it could give us a reason to think that when we experience the present as being special, that’s not because it’s objectively so. (...)
- Augustine on the Existence of the Past and the Future.David Anzalone - 2022 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 104 (2):290-311.In the eleventh book of the Confessiones Augustine puts forward several considerations about the nature of time. The received view is that he held that only the present exists, while the past and the future do not exist. This received view has recently been attacked by Paul Helm and Katherin Rogers, who have offered alternative interpretations according to which Augustine held that the present has no privileged ontological status, and that past, present and future all equally exist. The aim of (...)
- Look at the time!David Builes - 2022 - Analysis 82 (1):15-23.I argue that we can get evidence for the temporal ontology of the universe simply by looking at the time. The argument is an extension of the ‘epistemic objection’ towards Growing Block theories.
- The Metaphysics of Ockhamism.Andrea Iacona - 2022 - In Alessio Santelli (ed.), Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time: Semantic and Metaphysical Issues concerning Future Contingents. Springer.This paper investigates Ockhamism from a metaphysical point of view. Its main point is that the claim that future contingents are true or false is less demanding than usually expected, as it does not require particularly contentious assumptions about the future. First it will be argued that Ockhamism is consistent with a wide range of metaphysical views. Then it will be shown that each of these views leaves room for the claim that the future is open, at least on some (...)
- Five New Arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.Ned Markosian - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):158-181.According to The Static Theory of Time, time is like space in various ways, and there is no such thing as the passage of time. According to The Dynamic Theory of Time, on the other hand, time is very different from space, and the passage of time is an all-too-real phenomenon. This paper first offers some suggestions about how we should understand these two theories, and then introduces five new arguments for The Dynamic Theory of Time.
- Time and the Nature of the Atonement.Amy Seymour - 2022 - In Lara Buchak & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 10. Oxford University Press. pp. 169-233.Standard practice in philosophy of religion is to evaluate certain theological positions with respect to how well they comport with desirable philosophical positions and vice versa. Objections to skeptical theism generally posit that the position requires an unacceptable level of skepticism. Compatibility with the doctrine of the resurrection is used in an attempt to break ties in the debate between dualists and materialists about human persons. And so forth. In this chapter, I undertake such a discussion regarding theories of time (...)
- Eternalism and the problem of hyperplanes.Matias Slavov - 2022 - Ratio 35 (2):91-103.Eternalism is the view that the past, the present and the future exist simpliciter. A typical argument in favor of this view leans on the relativity of simultaneity. The ‘equally real with’ relation is assumed to be transitive between spacelike separated events connected by hyperplanes of simultaneity. This reasoning is in tension with the conventionality of simultaneity. Conventionality indicates that, even within a specific frame, simultaneity is based on the choice of the synchronization parameter. Hence the argument for eternalism is (...)
- Four-dimensionalism, eternalism, and deprivationist accounts of the evil of death.Andrew Brenner - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):13643-13660.Four-dimensionalists think that we persist over time by having different temporal parts at each of the times at which we exist. Eternalists think that all times are equally real. Deprivationists think that death is an evil for the one who dies because it deprives them of something. I argue that four-dimensionalist eternalism, conjoined with a standard deprivationist account of the evil of death, has surprising implications for what we should think about the evil of death. In particular, given these assumptions, (...)
- Powers, Processes, and Time.Giacomo Giannini - 2021 - Erkenntnis (6):1-25.In this paper I argue that even the most radical metaphysics of powers (such as that adopted by Mumford & Anjum, Cartwright, or Groff) are compatible with eternalism. I first offer a taxonomy of powers ontologies, and attempt to characterise the difference between moderate and radical powers ontologies – the latter are characterised by an emphasis on production and dynamicity. I consider an argument by C. Friebe to the effect that the productive character of powers is inconsistent with Eternalism and (...)
- Symmetric and asymmetric theories of time.Vincent Grandjean - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14403-14426.There is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the traditional way of defining the A-theories of time. One reason is that these definitions rest on an ontological question—‘Do the future and the past exist?’—to which no non-speculative answer can be provided. Another reason is that these definitions fail to distinguish between various A-theories of time at all times and, therefore, cannot be regarded as essential to them. In the present paper, I make a fresh start in the debate, by introducing two (...)
- Time: a very short introduction.Jenann Ismael - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.What is time? What does it mean for time to pass? Is it possible to travel in time? What is the difference between the past and future? Until the work of Newton, these questions were purely topics of philosophical speculation. Since then we've learned a great deal about time, and its study has moved from a subject of philosophical reflection to instead became part of the subject matter of physics. This Very Short Introduction introduces readers to the current physical understanding (...)
- An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Direction in our Concept of Time.Andrew J. Latham, Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (1):25-47.This paper empirically investigates one aspect of the folk concept of time by testing how the presence or absence of directedness impacts judgements about whether there is time in a world. Experiment 1 found that dynamists, showed significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in dynamically directed worlds than in non-dynamical non-directed worlds. Comparing our results to those we describe in Latham et al., we report that while ~ 70% of dynamists say there is time in B-theory worlds, (...)
- Théorie des cordes, gravité quantique à boucles et éternalisme.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2021 - In Alexandre Declos & Claudine Tiercelin (eds.), La métaphysique du temps : perspectives contemporaines. Paris: Collège de France.L'éternalisme, la thèse selon laquelle les entités que nous catégorisons comme étant passées, présentes et futures existent tout autant, est la meilleure approche ontologique de l'existence temporelle qui soit en accord avec les théories de la relativité restreinte et de la relativité générale. Cependant, les théories de la relativité restreinte et générale ne sont pas fondamentales si bien que plusieurs programmes de recherche tentent de trouver une théorie plus fondamentale de la gravité quantique rassemblant tous les enseignements de la physique (...)$8.99 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (2 more)Export citation Bookmark
- Philosophy of Time: A Contemporary Introduction.Sean Enda Power - 2021 - Routledge.As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. -/- Questions this book investigates include: Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be time because we cannot think (...)
- On the Origin of Logical Determinism in Babylonia.Andrew Schumann - 2021 - Logica Universalis 15 (3):331-357.In this paper, I show that the idea of logical determinism can be traced back from the Old Babylonian period at least. According to this idea, there are some signs which can explain the appearance of all events. These omens demonstrate the will of gods and their power realized through natural forces. As a result, each event either necessarily appears or necessarily disappears. This idea can be examined as the first version of eternalism – the philosophical belief that each temporal (...)
- Life and Death Without the Present.Daniel Story - 2021 - The Journal of Ethics 26 (2):193-207.In this paper, I explore the connection between certain metaphysical views of time and emotional attitudes concerning one’s own death and mortality. I argue that one metaphysical view of time, B-theory, offers consolation to mortals in the face of death relative to commonsense and another metaphysical view of time, A-theory. Consolation comes from three places. First, B-theory implies that time does not really pass, and as a result one has less reason to worry about one’s time growing short. Second, B-theory (...)
- Eternalism as Therapy: Mourning the Death of Michael Besso.Paula Sweeney - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (3):504-514.It is often assumed that an eternalist and a presentist will have the same emotional response to life's events because, regardless of one's metaphysical beliefs, we all have the same phenomenological experience of time passing and it is this experience that is relevant to emotional response. I question the assumption that beliefs about the metaphysics of time can have little impact on one's emotional responses and establish the position that scientific and metaphysical beliefs can offer succour.
- A Defence of the B-Theory of Time with Respect to the Problem of Change.James Vlachoulis - 2021 - Dissertation, University of AdelaideI attend to the debate between the A-theory of time and the B- theory of time by evaluating how each theory accounts for the possibility of change. I conclude in favour of the B-theory of time as an account of change. I begin by considering McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time. I connect McTaggart’s argument, and the attendant A-theory versus B-theory debate, to an argument against the possibility of change. This argument, the problem of change, can be refuted by (...)
- Temporal existence and temporal location.Fabrice Correia & Sven Rosenkranz - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (7):1999-2011.We argue that sensitivity to the distinction between the tensed notion of being something and the tensed notion of being located at the present time serves as a good antidote to confusions in debates about time and existence, in particular in the debate about how to characterise presentism, and saves us the trouble of going through unnecessary epicycles. Both notions are frequently expressed using the tensed verb ‘to exist’, making it systematically ambiguous. It is a commendable strategy to avoid using (...)
- Aquinas on the Existence of the Future: A Response to Gili.Damiano Costa - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (3):225-235.I defend my paper “Aquinas, Geach, and Existence”[1]against objections from Luca Gili, who argued that, according to Aquinas, future contingents do not enjoy genuine existence but exist in God’s mind only.[1] Damiano Costa, “Aquinas, Geach, and existence”, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11, no. 3.
- String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity and Eternalism.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10:17.Eternalism, the view that what we regard locally as being located in the past, the present and the future equally exists, is the best ontological account of temporal existence in line with special and general relativity. However, special and general relativity are not fundamental theories and several research programs aim at finding a more fundamental theory of quantum gravity weaving together all we know from relativistic physics and quantum physics. Interestingly, some of these approaches assert that time is not fundamental. (...)
- From Spacetime to Space and Time: A Reply to Markosian.Baptiste Le Bihan - 2020 - Analysis 80 (3):456-462.In a recent article, Ned Markosian gives an argument against four-dimensionalism understood as the view that time is one of four identical dimensions that constitute a single four-dimensional manifold. In this paper, I show that Markosian attacks a straw man as his argument targets a theory known to be false on empirical grounds. Four-dimensionalism rightly conceived in no way entails that time is identical to space. I then address two objections raised by Markosian against four-dimensionalism rightly conceived.
- Quantum mechanics, time, and theology: Indefinite causal order and a new approach to salvation.Emily Qureshi-Hurst & Anna Pearson - 2020 - Zygon 55 (3):663-684.Quantum mechanics has recently indicated that, at the fundamental level, temporal order is not fixed. This phenomenon, termed Indefinite Causal Order, is yet to receive metaphysical or theological engagement. We examine Indefinite Causal Order, particularly as it emerges in a 2018 photonic experiment. In this experiment, two operations A and B were shown to be in a superposition with regard to their causal order. Essentially, time, intuitively understood as fixed, flowing, and fundamental, becomes fuzzy. We argue that if Indefinite Causal (...)
- A memória episódica, o problema da cotemporalidade, e o senso comum.César Schirmer Dos Santos - 2020 - In Gerson Albuquerque de Araújo Neto & Giovanni Rolla (eds.), Ciência e Conhecimento. Teresina: Editora da Universidade Federal do Piauí. pp. 151-180.Os realistas diretos sobre a memória episódica alegam que um sujeito que lembra está em contato direto com um evento passado. No entanto, como seria possível estar em contato direto com um evento que deixou de existir? Este é o assim-chamado problema da cotemporalidade. A solução padrão para este problema, a qual foi proposta por Sven Bernecker, consiste em distinguir entre, por um lado, a ocorrência de um evento, e, por outro lado, a existência de um evento, de modo que (...)
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